I don't even know what this is but in this stifling southern summer heat I cannot muster the courage to finish up "A Penderwicks Christmas" so this is me passing the time. So let us divulge in a lazy childhood summer because I am, quite frankly, tired of writing teenage angst. Please tell me what you think, because I am trying out a more condensed style of writing, and, as you can probably tell from this rather lengthy intro, condensed writing isn't really my thing. This is set just one year after the third book and is NOT Skyffrey centric, though there will be some touches (not frequent though there is one in this chapter). I don't own the Penderwicks.
…
And so it goes.
…
Four girls were running through Quigley Wood, barefoot, and along a well-worn path. The air was cool and the pooling sunlight warm, and the breeze smelled rich and dark, like rotting leaves and soil and wet wood. The girls were all tall, slender (except maybe Batty who, at just six, still had some of her soft baby roundness), and really very beautiful in a way that wasn't particularly trying to be beautiful, like the characters in the Alcott or Wilder novel.
There was a boy too, also racing through the wood but the opposite way, toward the girls. He had an army green book bag slung over one shoulder and spilling out of it was sheet music, leaving a trail of waltzes and marches and requiems like breadcrumbs.
The collision of the four girls and the very interesting boy was glorious.
…
Skye draws the dragons and then slays them in the backyard. But the blue crayon ran out and Hound ate the brown one and so now the dragon has green eyes and he is looking at her in a way that makes her forget to fight.
He smiles at her and she subtracts twenty three freckles. He smiles at her and she divides by three wrinkles at the corner of each eye. He smiles and she takes the square root of a left side dimple.
When it reduces no further she is left with just the parabola of his lips, just Jeffrey, but finds that it still has the same effect on her. Something cool and slippery in her gut.
She estimates that this is only time she has been stumped by problem, counting the time she attempted complex algebra at age six. And it infuriates her.
